“And other big sensor cameras” being the interesting stuff they’re doing with mirrorless cameras that have 4/3rds or bigger sized senors.
I’m going to be in the market for a DSLR. Probably not for a couple of months, but I’ve been doing my research. Given the quality you can get out of a $1500 or less body these days, I don’t think I need to exceed that to get a good body.
They say you should spend all your money on the lenses anyway, so you can get by with a cheap, adequate body - and the cheaper bodies can take some great imagines - but they lack some of the nice features higher end cameras have like advanced autofocus systems, lots of fiddly dials, AF screw motors for legacy lenses, durability/weatherproofing, intervalometers, electronic levels, faster shooting rates, etc. But I’d rather start with a solid body, buy one good lens to start with, and gradually build my collection over time.
If it helps show what sort of stuff I’d use the camera for, here’s my flickr page. Mostly landscape work, some action… not a lot of portraits, and I probably wouldn’t do a lot of portraits, but you can do far more with them with big sensor cameras rather than compacts, so maybe it’ll ignite my interest in doing that.
I’m leaning towards the Pentax K-5, which is universally well regarded, even if Pentax is a small player on the market. The body is only $1100, but it’s a prosumer/semi-professional class body. The build quality is great with a rugged magnesium body and extensive weatherproofing seals. It has the Sony 16.2mp EXMOR sensor which is which is unusually good - much better than other sensors in its class, most likely the best sensor on any APS-C camera, possibly only rivalled by the newer Sony 24mp sensor. Based on reviews, it also has the best implementation of that sensor, leading to what might be the best APS-C image quality ever made. Possibly beaten only, remarkably, by the NEX-7 … more on that later. It has a full 1.5-2 stops in dynamic range over comparable sensors in its class. You can underexpose a tricky shot and then recover an amazing amount of shadow detail with a fill light. It has 14 bit raw to use that potential. Examples in this dp thread. The high iso performance is also best of any APS-C camera, you can get pretty good shots at 6400 and usable shots past that, which is amazing.
Lots of physical controls - seperate dials for shutter and aperture, physical switches for drive mode, AF mode, AF point selection, metering, etc. Intervalometer - which lots of cameras strangely lack and it’s such an easy thing to include - I want to do time lapse. Electronic level, which would be nice for panoramas. Better auto-iso system than other cameras (most DSLR implementations of auto-iso sound retarded to me and I don’t understand why they don’t just copy the system compacts use).
The downsides are a crappy movie mode (no autofocus during movies, inefficient compression scheme) and that the Pentax lens/accessory ecosystem isn’t as big as Canon/Nikon. Which reminds me - can you just fip a lens on manual focus and use it during movies? Is there anything that would stop you? Pentax lenses are regarded as good, and their primes are some of the best in the business, but there isn’t as much choice as with Canon/Nikon, and they seem at first glance to be more expensive in a lot of cases even though their lenses without image stabilization and some even without internal motors costing as much as their IS/motor counterparts.
Which reminds me actually - sensor/body stabilization vs lens. Canon and Nikon have lens-based. Sony and Pentax have sensor based. The perks of lens-based are that you get a stabilized image in the optical viewfinder (which is really important if you’re trying to shoot telephoto), and it seems like in general the system performs to a greater degree. In-body stabilization gets you a bouncy viewfinder, but means that every lens in stabilized. In theory, this could lead to cheaper lenses, but typically doesn’t seem to. But more importantly, any lens, even without a stabilization group, becomes stabilized. So fast primes (which never come in stabilized form) can become light gathering monsters. Old legacy lenses can become stabilized. Cool stuff. Not sure which is the better route though.
I’m intrigued by the idea of hunting down old lenses though. You can pick up old lenses from decades ago. We’ve developed a few tricks to reduce certain types of abberations, and we have some advanced anti-glare coatings and stuff, but the basics of optics haven’t really changed in 100 years. So you could get lenses that are 50 years old that are great at what they do - albeit they will be full manual lenses. Manual aperture ring, manual focus… but you can get lucky and get stuff that’s optically better than $1000 lenses today for under $100. I’m interested in giving that a go.
Other options: I really want the Sony 16.2mp sensor after everything I’ve read about it. The next best option with that is the Nikon D7000, which is very close in preference to the K5 for me. Main problem is - the factory that made it became destroyed by the Thailand flooding, prices have since gone up a few hundred bucks, and the situation will probably be worse by the time I’m ready to buy. I don’t know if Nikon will make new D7000s at a new factory, or just tool up for a D7100 that might not be quite as good, or may be more expensive.
The advantages of that, though, are a more advanced autofocus system… at least it’s 51 points vs 11, but I’ve read about problems with backfocus a lot on those things, and buying into the Nikon accessory/lens system, including having a nice wireless flash commander… although I’m not sure I’d ever use that, I try to minimize flash use as it is. Better movie mode too.
The other cameras that use this sensor are Sony. They have their conventional SLR, the A580, their oddball translucent mirror, the A-55, and their pretty remarkable compact, the NEX-5N. Sony can’t get much traction in the market but they make really interesting cameras, and with cool gadgets.
The SLT cameras are interesting and strange, able to have really good full time autofocus, including phase detect autofocus in movie/live view mode. Main downside is an electronic viewfielder, albeit the best in the business.
That’s one thing I wonder if I should just embrace now. Mirrors seem to be on their way out long term. I know lots of photographers can’t stand anything without an OVF, and I’ve never used a DSLR, so I wonder if I should just skip ever learning to like one and go straight to EVF.
There are also the newer A-65 and A-77, which have the same design, better EVF tech (apparently amazing), and the 24mp sensor. I haven’t looked into them much, but the gadgetry looks interesting. Main downside there is that the transculent mirror is always siphoning off about a third stop of light to the camera, hurting light gathering ability.
The Canon in this price range is the 60d, which to be honest isn’t particularly impressive in any way. There’s the 7D if I’m willing to step up in price, and while I like the body design, and it’s apparently a well-featured camera, the image quality lags behind the ones I already mentioned and it’s not too compelling at that price point. Which is too bad, because I probably like Canon’s lens lineup best of any major system. Granted, with only casual overview of prices/specs.
I’m not particularly interested in compact mirrorless cameras like 4/3rds. I figure if I’m going to do photography stuff, I can lug around a full size DSLR, and I like the extra physical controls. And there are amazing compacts they make nowadays to carry around with you at all times if you don’t bring your main camera.
But one interesting standout here is the NEX-7. It’s as small as those olympus and panasonic 4/3rds cameras, while having a full sized APS-C sensor. DPReview says the NEX-7 probably has the best image quality of any APS-C camera ever. Which is amazing. I’m concerned that the 24mp sony sensor replacing the 16.2MP sensor wouldn’t be as good - increasing the MP at this range doesn’t offer much but degrades high-iso performance, but they seem to think the noise levels are the same, so maybe it really is a better sensor. They managed to put a remarkable amount of physical controls onto the small body (albeit nowhere near something like the K-5), and load up up with a great EVF and the cool sony gadgets like sweep panorama.
It seems to me that the NEX-7 could single-handedly kill the entire 4/3rds market. If you can get a camera that’s only a tiny bit bigger, but has the best image quality of any APS-C, why would you ever pick 4/3rds? More pancake lens options at the moment I suppose, but they’ll be appear for the e-mount shortly enough I’m sure.
Which brings me to possibly the biggest drawback - e-mount options aren’t as flexible or cheap as any of the major full size mounts. But it’s an amazing feat of technology, and if I decided I needed something more compact, that would easily be my first choice.
So… this OP is running a bit long. This isn’t just a thread about me hunting for a camera - feel free to use it for your own DSLR discussion - what you’re looking for, cool new technology, whatever. But I would like input about what camera I should be picking, especially if the K-5 is a good choice.